by Tim Inwood

It used to be in this country that if you were arrested for a crime you were presumed innocent until trial. Now if you are a crime victim you may be perceived as a criminal if you are a gun owner. After reading an article about a burglary in the Land of Lincoln, my blood went to a slow boil.

In the wee hours of an August morning, Rockford (IL) police were called by the victim’s neighbors to report a burglary. What the police found was the disorganized and cluttered home of a gun owner. The burglar had fled, but the police were surprised to find a collection of about three hundred firearms. The 67 year-old homeowner was out of town. Research by police showed he is a legal FOID cardholder in Illinois and the guns apparently were registered. Nevertheless the police proceeded to stack his firearms outside his home and then take the guns into custody. I have to ask, since when is the property of the victim confiscated as suspect?

The comments from the neighbors were equally disturbing to me. Coley Woods who lives across the street said, “Even if he’s a registered gun owner or not, that just seems like its too many rifles.” Oh really! Says who? Since when is there a set number on what any American can own? It used to be a free country, Has that changed?

“It’s just un-real to see this many guns involved a regular residential neighborhood,” says concerned resident McArthur Tennin.”

From the article:

“At the current time we’re taking the firearms for safe keeping as evidence until we can further investigate this,” says Deputy Chief Lindmark.

Neighbors say even though the weapons may be legal, they still pose a security threat to their neighborhood.

The story concludes by noting that, as of late Wednesday afternoon, “police haven’t charged the homeowner.”

Charged with what? Gun ownership? That is appalling!

I find it disturbing that there is an automatic assumption that something is wrong because someone owns firearms. The fact that someone has a large collection suggests nothing more to me than a hobby or investment. Are we concerned if we find a large collection of baseball cards or stamps? No, of course not. But because of the “culture of sheep” mindset drummed into so many people in this country, there is often an automatic assumption by some that something is fishy if you own guns. The comment that the firearms being in the neighborhood is some sort of security threat is ludicrous and ignorant. I have little patience with such thinking. I note that nowhere in the story do any of the neighbors suggest any issues or problems with their gun owning neighbor. Yet now he is a “security threat.”

The events in this story happened in Illinois, a state that has produced anti-gun politicians like Mayor Richard Daley and President Barack Obama, and still lives in the dark ages of denying their citizens any form of law that allows the carrying of arms for defense. So I suppose I should not be surprised by the anti-gun bigotry exhibited. I can only pray things improve for the citizens of Illinois. But it also reminds us that it is up to all gun owners to do our part to educate the public on the fact that our hobby of gun collecting is as natural as collecting sports memorabilia, coins, tea pots or any other hobby pursued by other law abiding Americans. We gun owners are not a threat to anyone except to politicians who wish to ban our guns and that threat is only carried out at the ballot box.

Make no mistake, friends, we may have the Heller and McDonald decisions behind us, but those who wage war on gun ownership are not deterred or going away. They are as determined as ever to take your guns and vilify you in the process. Join the fight to protect your gun rights today.

Tim Inwood is the current Legislative Liaison and Past President of the Clinton County Farmers and Sportsmen Association, an Endowment Member of the NRA and Life Member of the OGCA, Republican Central Committeeman for Chester Township A, in Clinton County, Ohio, and a volunteer for Buckeye Firearms Association.

full story  I was unable to get the video to play on this site. I think they have disabled it.

Eddited after the EPA rejected this petition.

the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Lisa Jackson, who was responsible for banning bear hunting in New Jersey, is now considering a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) – a leading anti-hunting organization – to ban all traditional ammunition under the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976, a law in which Congress expressly exempted ammunition.

Thats correct the LAW forbids the EPA from regulating ammunition but the new socialist government under Obama does not care what the law says.

If the EPA approves the petition, the result will be a total ban on all ammunition containing lead-core components, including hunting and target-shooting rounds.

• There is no scientific evidence that the use of traditional ammunition is having an adverse impact on wildlife populations.
• Wildlife management is the proper jurisdiction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and the 50 state wildlife agencies.
• A 2008 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on blood lead levels of North Dakota hunters confirmed that consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition does not pose a human health risk.
• A ban on traditional ammunition would have a negative impact on wildlife conservation. The federal excise tax that manufacturers pay on the sale of the ammunition (11 percent) is a primary source of wildlife conservation funding. The bald eagle’s recovery, considered to be a great conservation success story, was made possible and funded by hunters using traditional ammunition – the very ammunition organizations like the CBD are now demonizing.
• Recent statistics from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service show that from 1981 to 2006 the number of breeding pairs of bald eagles in the United States increased 724 percent. And much like the bald eagle, raptor populations throughout the United States are soaring.

My husband was convicted of felony when he was a teenager and now he is older he likes to hunt we are a hunting family on both sides and they want let him have a gun the man is 40 now he is alot older now it is stupied . I think they should beable to buy a gun after so many years with out being in trouble afterwords. It’s not right to punish you all your life if you have not did nothing sence then we all have a right to bare arms!!!!!!!

If you run a blog you had better take notice. Obama will require you to file forms with all your members names if you mention public officials within 60 days of an election. Pro Obama groups like the SEIU would be exempt.

Fresh from his efforts to seize government control of the health services sector (ObamaCare) and the financial markets (“finance reform”), Barack Obama has a new priority: silence his political opposition.

As satisfying as it was for Obama to seize control of one-sixth of the economy, he has had to suffer protest from the “little people” (like us). So he is pushing the Orwellian “DISCLOSE” bill (HR 5175) to make sure gun groups and other pro-freedom forces cannot mobilize their members in the upcoming elections.

When Obama says “disclose,” what he really means is “disclose gun group membership lists”

Not surprisingly, these efforts to shut down free speech don’t apply to Obama allies, like Democratic-leaning labor unions. They only apply to groups which are not reliable Obama allies, like Gun Owners of America.

But, for those groups whose free speech is targeted for Obama’s wrath under this bill, the consequences are severe:

* Under Title II of the bill, GOA (and other groups, as well as many bloggers) who merely mention public officials within 60 days of an election could be required to file onerous disclosures — potentially including their membership lists.

* Also under Title II, GOA could be required to spend as much as half of the time of a 30-second ad on government-written disclosures.

* In addition, Sections 201 through 203 would potentially put the government’s snooping eyes on any American who voices a political opinion, despite the fact that the Supreme Court, in Buckley v. Valeo, declared that Americans have a right to voice their opinion to an unlimited extent, if unconnected with a political campaign.

Here’s an idea: If Obama is so irritated at the Supreme Court’s defense of political free speech by groups like GOA, why doesn’t he apply his sleazy new rules to his political allies, as well?

ACTION: Please urge your congressman to vote against the anti-gun HR 5175. This bill has moved out of committee and has now been placed on the House calendar.

You can use the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to send a pre-written message to your Representative.

—– Pre-written letter —–

Dear Representative:

I urge you to oppose HR 5175, a bill that will deny the free speech rights of all Americans. Under Title II of this bill:

* Groups like Gun Owners of America (and other groups, as well as many bloggers) who merely mention public officials within 60 days of an election could be required to file onerous disclosures — potentially including their membership lists — even though the Supreme Court has previously ruled in NAACP v. Alabama that membership lists (like those of GOA’s) are off limits to government control.

* Also, groups like GOA and the NRA could be required to spend as much as half of the time of a 30-second ad on government-written disclosures.

* In addition, Sections 201 through 203 would potentially put the government’s snooping eyes on any American who voices a political opinion, despite the fact that the Supreme Court, in Buckley v. Valeo, declared that Americans have a right to voice their opinion to an unlimited extent, if unconnected with a political campaign.

Here’s an idea: If Obama is so irritated at the Supreme Court’s defense of political free speech by groups like GOA, why doesn’t he apply the new rules in HR 5175 to his political allies (like the labor unions), as well?

Suffice it to say, if you care anything about the First or Second Amendments, you will vote against HR 5175. GOA will be scoring this vote on their rating of Congress.

Sincerely,

Health care overhaul spawns mass confusion for Obama voters.

Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors’ offices, human resources departments and business groups.
“They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’”
http://serr8d.blogspot.com/2010/04/wheres-my-free-health-care-obama-pump.html

Serr8d said…
Many of the Democrat voters are politically uneducated and are lured to the ballot box to vote (D) only because they’ve been promised Other People’s Stuff: reparations, free health care, cradle to grave sustenance; it’s positive feedback. Ring the bell, here come the salivating Democrats. They are likely not individuals who would be considered biologically successful. Placed on the Bell Curve, you’d find most of ‘em in the lowest percentiles. I’ll bet most of ‘em would not even vote unless they expected to get something for it. It’s the looter – moocher symbiosis that Ben Franklin warned us about.

http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=5993

For now, Obama is back on the campaign trail to promote his health care reform, a move to answer the question that may not stop being asked for four more years: Where’s my free health care?

U can not wait till someone asks Obama on tv this question.

Violence Policy Center “Blacks Should Have Reduced Gun Rights”
Whatever the VPC’s intent may be, the gun control group indirectly concludes that black communities must be disarmed.

reinstate the black codes/

Washington, DC – -(Pajamasmedia.com)- The Violence Policy Center (VPC) — the anti-gun rights group that Barack Obama repeatedly voted to fund while he was a director of the Joyce Foundation — believes that African-Americans are too violent to deserve the entire Constitution.

Blacks in the United States are disproportionately affected by homicide. For the year 2007, blacks represented 13 percent of the nation’s population, yet accounted for 49 percent of all homicide victims.

As noted at the beginning of this study, the devastation homicide inflicts on black teens and adults is a national crisis, yet it is all too often ignored outside of affected communities.

For blacks, like all victims of homicide, guns — usually handguns — are far and away the number one murder tool. Successful efforts to reduce America’s black homicide toll must put a focus on reducing access to firearms.

For an organization to make a public declaration that suggests an entire race be denied the same level of constitutional protections as others is both shocking and bewildering. The study received financing from left-wing groups dedicated to social engineering, including the David Bohnett Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Public Welfare Foundation.

The goal of the Violence Policy Center in this report is the goal of the group in every report it has ever issued: an erosion of gun rights for all Americans, with the ultimate goal being the prohibition of all firearms save those under state control.

Towards that totalitarian end, the VPC does not seem to have any qualms about advocating a return to racist policies that left African-American communities helpless targets for most of a century.

Nor does Sugarman or his group explain how disarming law-abiding blacks will make them anything other than victims for those that refuse to follow existing prohibitions against murder…..

Whatever the VPC’s intent may be, the gun control group indirectly concludes that black communities must be disarmed.

Calls to limit the access of African-Americans to firearms specifically echo the “black codes” adopted immediately at the end of the Civil War. These laws were passed in southern states in response to the Thirteenth Amendment’s outlawing of slavery, and were specifically engineered to circumscribe the civil rights and liberties of newly freed slaves and freemen. The codes assured the second-class status of African-Americans, and were a forerunner to decades of “separate but equal” segregation under Jim Crow laws — which were only overcome during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Among the codes commonly passed were laws that forbid or restricted the ownership of firearms by African-Americans. The codes were “justified” with the explanation that African-Americans did not have the same rights as white citizens.

The Ku Klux Klan and similar groups were active in attempting to disarm blacks in the post-war South, and United States v. Cruikshank gave paramilitary racist mobs carte blanche to disarm African-American communities. This left them nearly defenseless to decades of lynchings, assaults, indignity, and, in several dozen instances, full-fledged “race riots” that are more accurately described as massacres. Most of these rampages occurred with the full knowledge of local and state governments. The 1898 Wilmington race riot was carried out with the full knowledge and indifference of both North Carolina Governor Daniel Lindsay Russell and President William McKinley.

One can only hope that Josh Sugarman, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, is completely ignorant of the many mob actions and the thousands of deaths that resulted from laws that stripped African-Americans of their rights and liberties. Considering his long-running and strident anti-gun advocacy, it seems likely that Sugarman and the organization are well aware of history but made a political calculation in asking that African-Americans be disarmed.

The goal of the Violence Policy Center in this report is the goal of the group in every report it has ever issued: an erosion of gun rights for all Americans, with the ultimate goal being the prohibition of all firearms save those under state control. Towards that totalitarian end, the VPC does not seem to have any qualms about advocating a return to racist policies that left African-American communities helpless targets for most of a century. Nor does Sugarman or his group explain how disarming law-abiding blacks will make them anything other than victims for those that refuse to follow existing prohibitions against murder.

The Right of the People to Keep and
Bear Arms: The Common Law
Tradition Full story here. A must read.

Weatherup insists that the English right conveyed “no recognition of any personal right to bear arms on the part of subjects generally” but merely granted members of the militia the right to “keep and bear arms in accordance with their militia duties.” [124] Such an interpretation ignores the clear language of the English right and disregards the accompanying historic record. The militia was certainly of grave concern to members of the Convention Parliament, but this was not because members of the militia had been disarmed. Quite the contrary. The militia was a problem because the Militia Act of 1662 had permitted its officers wide latitude to disarm law-abiding citizens. The correction of this abuse and many others that preoccupied the members required new legislation

IE the 2nd amd. does not give the militia the right to have arms but it says that because we have a militia the people have a right to protect themselves from it.

The Whig members of the Convention had pressed hard for a collective as well as an individual right [128] and the first version of the arms article adhered to their view that the public should be armed to protect their rights:

It is necessary for the publick Safety, that the Subjects which are Protestants, should provide and keep Arms for their common Defence. And that the Arms which have been seized, and taken from them, be restored. [129]
The second version of this article retreated somewhat from this stance. It stated:

That the Subjects, which are Protestants, may provide and keep Arms, for their common Defence. [130]

If one applies English rights and practice to the construction of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, it is clear that the Amendment’s first clause is an amplifying rather than a qualifying clause, and that a general rather than a select militia was intended. In fact, every American colony formed a militia that, like its English model, comprised all able-bodied male citizens. [166] This continued to be the practice when the young republic passed its first uniform militia act under its new constitution in 1792. [167] Such a militia implied a people armed and trained to arms.

The Second Amendment should properly be read to extend to every citizen the right to have arms for personal defense. This right was a legacy of the English, whose right to have arms was, at base, as much a personal right as a collective duty. It is significant that the American right to keep arms was unfettered, unlike the English right, which was limited in various ways throughout its development.

Thus, in guaranteeing the individual right to keep and bear arms, and the collective right to maintain a general militia, the Second Amendment amplified the tradition of the English Bill of Rights for the purpose of preserving and protecting government by and for the people.

I know there’s an old adage that one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.
But I don’t subscribe to the idea that when evil and foolish people die we should pretend they were something other than evil and foolish.

And Ted Kennedy was evil and foolish.

He wasn’t just a politician with whom I disagreed.

He was a rotten man – a wicked man.

I know you’re not hearing this from the rest of the press. I know you’re not even hearing this from his worst critics. But if we can’t call Ted Kennedy wicked and immoral, those terms have lost all meaning.

It’s no secret I didn’t like Ted Kennedy.

I believe his political epitaph should have been written July 18, 1969, the day his behavior led directly to the untimely death of Mary Jo Kopechne at the Chappaquiddick Bridge.

Until that moment, as the surviving brother of an assassinated president and an assassinated senator-presidential candidate, he had been an object of love and pity for an entire nation.

Over four decades he has served as a kind of “enemy within” the American political system – attempting to elicit the support of the Soviet Union against President Reagan’s policies in the 1980s, ignoring the tax-cutting prescription of his elder brother, failing to learn the real lessons of Vietnam, failing even to learn the lessons of his own brother’s errors of appeasement in the Bay of Pigs, practicing his own unique brand of plantation racism and blaming America for all the problems of the world. That’s Ted Kennedy.

That even one of the 50 states would deem him worthy of serving in the U.S. Senate for most of his life is something of a national disgrace.

Nevertheless, maybe because of his alcohol-addled brain or his unfulfilled ego, occasionally Ted Kennedy has demonstrated a kind of candor that is in short supply in Washington.

It may have been intellectual frustration that caused Kennedy to admit what he was 14 years ago – and what he remained until his death.

Ted Kennedy always was a socialist – and he actually admitted it on the floor of the Senate Jan. 20, 1995.

I’ve never seen this revelation before, though it has been a matter of public record all these years – published, as it were, in the Congressional Record. I was amazed to find it in a book by Republican political consultant Marc Nuttle called “Moment of Truth.”

Here is how the Kennedy admission came about.

Economist Milton Friedman was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of a national constitutional amendment for a balanced budget. Kennedy argued that a requirement for a balanced budget would restrict the federal government’s power and its ability to spend – thus, he said, Washington’s role in more fairly and equitably distributing wealth, goods and services.

“Senator, socialism hasn’t worked in 6,000 years of recorded history,” explained Friedman. “Why won’t you give up on it?”

Kennedy rose to his feet, according to Nuttle, who attended the hearing, and replied: “It hasn’t worked in 6,000 years of recorded history because it didn’t have me to run it.”

Full story here

Surely Kennedy was not as skillful and sophisticated in articulating his position as some other politicians. Surely Kennedy, with his comfortable, unchallenged position as the senior senator from Massachusetts, didn’t need to be so tactful. Surely even Kennedy avoided, for the most part, such heated admissions that he believes socialism can work under the right kind of skillful leadership – namely his.

But I’m not going to forget that admission today – the day after his death.

I’m not going to forget the way he unashamedly promoted abortion on demand.

I’m not going to forget the way he attempted to aid and abet our enemies to further his own political ambitions.

I’m not going to forget the way he betrayed his own older brother’s political legacy of anti-communism and free-market economics to lead his party, and very possibly his country, off the cliff.

I’m not going to forget the idiotic way he characterized Ronald Reagan’s brilliant initiative for strategic missile defense as “Star Wars.”

I’m not going to forget how he always blamed America and Americans first for every problem in the world.

I’m not going to forget the way he left Mary Jo Kopechne alive in a car underwater where she survived, according to the coroner’s report, for up to three hours, while he showered, shaved and sobered up before alerting police to his reckless, homicidal driving.

Obama’s pick is Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who is currently on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District. There she has racked up an anti-Second Amendment record and has displayed contempt for the rule of law under the Constitution.

The Heller decision put the Supreme Court in support of the
Constitutional protection of the individual right to keep and bear arms. Sotomayor, a politically correct lover of centralized government power (as long as she is part of the power elite), immediately went into counter-attack mode against the Heller decision.

Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel earlier this year which ruled in Maloney v. Cuomo that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. As she and her cohorts claimed, the Supreme Court has not yet incorporated the states under the Second Amendment. Until then, she believes, the Second only applies to the District of Columbia.

This is pure judicial arrogance — something Sotomayor relishes (as long as she is one of the ruling judges). In fact, protection of the right to keep and bear arms was a major objective for enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, as recently freed slaves were being disarmed and terrorized in their neighborhoods.

But Sotomayor disdains this important right of individuals, as indicated by an earlier opinion from 2004. In United States v. Sanchez-Villar, she stated that “the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.”

Sotomayor has held very anti-gun views, even as far back as the 1970s. Fox Cable News reported yesterday that in her senior thesis at Princeton University, she wrote that America has a “deadly obsession” with guns and that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to
firearms ownership.

Sotomayor’s Second Amendment views go hand in hand with her politically correct views on the law and the role of judges.

In a speech given at Duke University in 2005, she made it abundantly clear that judges are involved in making policy. Realizing that this did not sound very judicial (even though most judges act on this basis), Sotomayor tried to laugh off her brazen admission: “I know this is on tape and I should never say that, [audience laughing], because we don’t
make law — I know. Um, okay. I know, I’m not promoting it, I’m not advocating it.” The audience continued to laugh. They got the joke.

But Sotomayor’s joke will be on us and our liberties if she gets confirmed to the Supreme Court. And that is why we need to start contacting our Senators early and often, urging them to vote against this dangerous nomination.

ACTION: Please contact your two Senators and urge them to oppose the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. You can go to the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at
http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to send your Senators a pre-written e-mail message.

Ex-Hitler youth compares Obama to Nazi rise

Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. … However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual … who … can be used to improve communities by an expedient organ of government.
– Friedrich Nitzsche

Marxists believe that a non-socialist society is to blame for what is wrong with people and therefore, change has to begin with those who are responsible for society, mainly “the rich.” Others, not they, have to change, and the others are in the end all those who oppose socialism. People are either forced to comply or they are killed, as happened in Nazi Germany. If you put right what is wrong in society, so goes Marxist theory, you will heal injustice and people, products of a hostile society, will become their good selves. Healing is created by installing more and more socialists in office, socialist immorality and socialist programs.

Barack Obama has not touched corruption and moral issues. His plans for dealing with issues are of economic nature and are pure Marxism – blaming the non-socialist enemies and distributing money to bribe poor voters, making them dependent on government and cementing its power. Marxism’s concepts lead to the welfare state – and on to a totalitarian system built on lies where government is central. There is no real concern for people; power is at the heart of all their projects.

The Democratic Party, with the leadership of Obama, the Clintons, Reid, Pelosi and comrades, is an illegitimate party that is destroying the Constitution – which leads to spiritual, political and economic disaster. It is illegitimate because of policy principles like abortion and also Darwinism being taught in schools. Instead of protecting life, this party promotes killing life. The Republican Party, on the other hand, is legitimate in principle with a majority that wants to do what is right but is lacking a national and personal purpose and therefore so often appeases what is wrong. Nobody wants to risk his position. It is the Appeaser’s Party. There are too many who are looking after themselves first and their country second.

One central theme is enough to clarify why I say that the socialist Democratic Party is illegitimate. Their policies are Marxist and not American, and they promote immorality. It was the Soviet Union, for instance, that was the first state to make abortion legal, already at the beginning of the ’20s. Having grown up in the godless totalitarian Nazi society, it is appalling for me to watch that in America, politicians can speak of their “Christian faith” and at the same time make abortion, same-sex marriage and homosexuality their party policy. Democrats are not fit for American constitutional government.

No government or parliament across the globe has the authority to overrule God. The godless national Socialists, called Nazis, did it, and my family, Jewish people, all Germans and Europeans paid dearly for it, because millions of us did not see our own evil inside. American soldiers shed their blood to liberate us from Nazi power. It pains me to see America today on the same track. Not only those who actively promote the godless programs allowed by our government establishment but also those who for personal reasons or lack of backbone appease them. They will pay for it, here and when they face their Creator. I know the consequence of a godless government. America must have a God-fearing government. The abortionists are closer to the Nazis than to our Founding Fathers. Both base their philosophy and action on lies.

More Here

Anti-gun Land Bill On The Move S. 22
– House Vote Expected This Week
Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Lost in all the news of the massive bailout bill that just passed the Senate is another enormous bill, one that increases federal control of public and private land.

Of particular concern to gun owners is that the bill, S. 22, will greatly expand the amount of land controlled by the National Park Service. NPS land is currently subject to a gun ban.

While President Bush took steps in the waning days of his presidency to reverse the ban, the new regulations apply to persons who carry a concealed firearm with a permit. Non-permit holders and open carry are not explicitly addressed.

Another eyebrow-raising aspect of this bill is that it is actually a compilation of over 150 separate pieces of legislation that never passed out of Congress on their own merits.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) successfully held up over 100 of these bills, until anti-gun Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rolled all of the bills into one so-called Coburn Omnibus and forced it through the Senate in January on a vote of 73-21.

As the House prepares to take up the bill, the Democrat leadership has taken procedural steps to ensure that the measure cannot be amended or altered in any way. That means that if it passes the House, it goes right to President Obama’s desk, where it will be signed into law.

Here are a few of the more troubling aspects of the bill:

* It authorizes the federal government to buy private land adjacent to national parks and trails. Such land would be controlled by the NPS, and thus be subject to the gun ban.

* The bill federalizes the Washington-Rochambeau Route, a 650 mile trail that stretches from Rhode Island to Virginia and includes sections of major thoroughfares such as Interstate 95 and U.S. Route 1, and passes through cities like Boston and Philadelphia. The entire trail would fall under the NPS and the gun ban.

* The National Landscape Conservation System groups together millions of acres of federal land and places it under one new umbrella agency. The NLCS was created during the Clinton administration and run administratively since then. S. 22 will codify the system, which raises concerns for hunters and sportsmen. Much of this land is consolidated
from the BLM and the Forest Service, which have always allowed hunting and recreational shooting. It is unclear what rules will be promulgated by the new agency and if gun owners’ rights will be protected.

* S. 22 strips out small concessions won by pro-gunners in the House last year that would allow state and local law to govern firearms possession and hunting on certain land.

* S.22 allows for NO amendments. Pro-gun members who want to offer an amendment to fully repeal the NPS gun ban are prevented from doing so by the anti-gun leadership.

The full House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the bill this Wednesday or Thursday.

Unless the NPS gun ban is repealed and the rights of gun owners are protected, Gun Owners of America opposes the bill in its entirety.

ACTION: Please urge your Representative to repeal the NPS gun ban in S. 22, or to vote against the entire bill. You can go to the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at http://capwiz.com/gunowners/home/ to send your Representative the pre-written e-mail message below.

—– Prewritten Letter —–

Dear Representative:

I urge you to oppose S. 22, a bill that will greatly expand the amount of land controlled by the National Park Service (NPS).

NPS land is currently subject to a gun ban. While President Bush took steps in the waning days of his presidency to reverse the ban, the new regulations apply to persons who carry a concealed firearm with a permit. Non-permit holders and open carry are not explicitly addressed.
Which is why S. 22 raises so many concerns:

* It authorizes the federal government to buy private land adjacent to national parks and trails. Such land would be controlled by the NPS, and thus be subject to the gun ban.

* The bill federalizes the Washington-Rochambeau Route, a 650 mile trail, and places it under the NPS gun ban.

* S. 22 will codify the National Landscape Conservation System, which raises concerns for hunters and sportsmen. Much of this land is consolidated from the BLM and the Forest Service, which have always allowed hunting and recreational shooting. It is unclear what rules will be promulgated by the new agency and if gun owners’ rights will be protected.

* S. 22 also strips out small concessions which were won in the House last year that would allow state and local law to govern firearms possession and hunting on certain land. But the anti-gun House leadership is preventing any amendments to fully repeal the NPS gun ban.

If these concerns are not corrected in S. 22, I would strongly urge you to vote against it.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Well its official the recession started in dec 2008 right after the minimum wage increased.

To quote a UK blog about the UK min wage.

in a period of recession a minimum wage is likely to deepen that recession by preventing labour markets from clearing. Firms will be unable to take on new employees willing to work for relatively low wages in order to escape unemployment; if firms cannot take on new employees and people cannot exit from unemployment, then the route out of recession becomes much slower and more arduous.
Sadly, rather than reducing or abolishing the minimum wage, in March this year the government announced that next month it will increase to £5.73 per hour. In the present economic climate this is, frankly, lunacy.

The truth is that we need to abolishing the minimum wage and let people bargen for a going wage. But people voted for a president who wants to raise it so its clear to me that when it increases again in Jan 09 that things will only get worse. And when Obama ads his on raise onto that we will dive deeper into a depression.

Is this the change you voted for?

As Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel puts it, the crisis is “an opportunity to do things you could not do before . . . You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Obama’s has nominated Eric Holder for attorney general.
deputy attorney general in the Bill Clinton administration from 1997 to 2001

He advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three-day waiting period on handgun sales, rationing handgun sales to no more than one per month, banning possession of handguns and so-called “assault weapons” by anyone under age 21, a gun show restriction bill that would have given the federal government the power to shut down all gun shows, and national gun registration.

Now do you understand why gun sales are up?

“He also promoted the lie that ‘Every day that goes by, about 12, 13 more children in this country die from gun violence’ — a statistic that is only true if you count 18-year-old adult gangsters who shoot each other as ‘children,’”

After 9/11 Holder wrote that a new law should give “the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a record of every firearm sale.” He also said prospective gun buyers should be checked against secret government “watch lists” .

Earlier this year, Holder was on the wrong side of the DC case — co-signed an amicus brief in support of the District of Columbia’s ban on all handguns and on the use of any firearm for self-defense in the home.

Holder played a key role in the gunpoint, night-time kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez. The pretext for the paramilitary invasion of the six-year-old’s home was that someone in his family might have been licensed to carry a handgun under Florida law. Although a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo showed a federal agent dressed like a soldier and pointing a machine gun at the man who was holding the terrified child, Holder claimed that Gonzalez “was not taken at the point of a gun” and that the federal agents whom Holder had sent to capture Gonzalez had acted “very sensitively.” If Mr. Holder believes that breaking down a door with a battering ram, pointing guns at children (not just Elian), and yelling “Get down, get down, we’ll shoot” is example of acting “very sensitively,” his judgment about the responsible use of firearms is not as acute as would be desirable for a cabinet officer who would be in charge of thousands and thousands of armed federal agents, many of them paramilitary agents with machine guns.

These policies match Obama’s anti gun history and show that Obama supportors who thought he was pro gun were wrong.

Eric Holder was also involved in the Waco raid that killed US children.

About two weeks before the raid, Tim Russert asked Holder, “You wouldn’t send a SWAT team in the dark of night to kidnap the child, in effect?”

Holder answered, “No, we don’t expect anything like that to happen.”
Then after the raid Holder was asked “Why such a dramatic change in position?” “I’m not sure I’d call it a dramatic change,” Holder answered. “We waited ‘til five in the morning, just before dawn.”

So ask yorself going back to Jack booted thugs. Is this the change people wanted? This man should be no wehere near government he is not qualified.

In July 1996 Senate Amendment 5083 to House Bill 2980 passed by unanimous voice vote. This amendment is now what we refer to as the Lautenberg Amendment. It prevents people with any ‘domestic violence’ convictions from ever owning a gun. The conviction could have occurred long before the passage of S.A.5083 and may have been a misdemeanor.

Over turning Lautenberg will not be easy. We know better, but the opposition will claim that we favor domestic violence. The concepts of ‘ex post facto’ and reasonableness are violated by this law. What we really favor is the Constitution.

http://www.petitiononline.com/658104/petition.html (open as of 08)

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/Lautenbergrepeal (closed)
http://www.gopetition.com/online/7723.html (closed)

Orginal date nov05   Updated nov08

Well we warned you Obama was anti gun but you were promised by his factcheck website that he was not. Now his new website has posted his true gun control plans.

Last week President-elect Obama’s Web site had posted his administration’s agenda for curtailing the Second Amendment rights of law abiding Americans, thereby validating the concerns of gun owners, sportsmen and firearms enthusiasts all across the country. Curiously, the Obama-Biden gun control agenda was taken down from the Web site after just two days.

We are not really surprised at the changing website Obamas webmasters have done this before on Obama websites. But this time they have been caught. Because the new website is a gov website it is PD unlike the old campain one that was copyrighted. A archived copy of the old website has been posted here so Obamas webmasters can no longer hide what they posted. Guncontrol is listed under Urban Policy
To allow the Obama camp to pretend their words never existed is unacceptable.

President-elect Obama’s Web site stated he would make permanent the expired “assault weapons” ban of 1994, a ban on firearms that was based on cosmetic appearance, such as the type of stock on the gun, and not functionality. The expired ban did nothing to reduce crime while it was in place. President-elect Obama’s Web site intentionally misled the American people by referring to these firearms as “weapons that belong on foreign battlefields.” These firearms are not machine guns. In reality, these commonplace firearms that President-elect Obama wants to permanently ban are used in shooting competitions and are found in homes and hunting lodges all across the country. They fire only once with each trigger pull, no spray firing, and they shoot the same ammunition as other firearms of the same caliber.

President-elect Obama has also promised to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, a law which restricts public access to sensitive, law enforcement — only firearms tracing data. Public release of gun trace data outside law enforcement has and will continue to jeopardize ongoing criminal investigations, putting the lives of law enforcement, witnesses and others at risk. This is why Congress, ATF, and law enforcement, including the nation’s largest police organization, the Fraternal Order of Police, agree on the importance of securing this sensitive data. Access to gun trace data should only be available to law enforcement taking part in a bona-fide investigation, and law enforcement already has the access it needs for this purpose. No law enforcement agency has ever been denied access to trace data as part of a criminal investigation.

The Obama-Biden Web site also called for “childproofing” all firearms, despite firearm-related accidents being at their lowest levels in history, including a 60 percent decrease over the last 20 years, and a federal law that requires firearms dealers to provide a lock with each handgun sold and to have locks available for consumers to purchase. Firearms industry members have a long history of supporting the safe and responsible use and storage of firearms through programs such as Project ChildSafe, a campaign developed by the NSSF that has distributed over 35 million free gun lock safe storage kits throughout the United States. For years, manufacturers have voluntarily provided a free locking device with each new firearm. Thankfully, the National Safety Council reports that childhood firearms accidents now comprise less than 1 percent of all fatal childhood injuries.

Finally, the appointment of Rahm Emanuel, the strident chief architect of the Clinton-Gore gun control agenda, as President-elect Obama’s chief of staff sends an unambiguous message to gun-owners and members of the firearms industry.

Is this the change you voted for? Perhaps next time someone says they have change but wont tell you what it is you won’t vote for them.

Barack Obama tells a plumber in Ohio he wants to “spread the wealth around,” eliciting criticism that his economic recovery plan is socialist in nature.

Barack Obama told a tax-burdened plumber over the weekend that his economic philosophy is to “spread the wealth around” —

“Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed “more and more for fulfilling the American dream.”

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too,” Obama responded. “My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

The lawsuit against Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy claiming he doesn’t meet U.S. residency requirements had a motion for a temporary restraining order denied Friday. Judge Surrick denied Berg’s emergency request, ecause Obama had not yet been served with the legal complaint and a summons.

Once the senator is served, Berg will be able to move the suit forward in court. The case is still “very alive and active,” according to an e-mail message from his office.
The lawyer plans to file another motion for a temporary restraining order once Obama has been served.

Berg said he was encouraged that Judge R. Barclay Surrick did not dismiss the lawsuit. The litigation also sought “expedited discovery.” “We’re still waiting to serve the senator,” Berg said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Discovery would include examining the candidate’s birth certificate and adoption papers, among other documents, Berg said.

In the motion’s supporting memorandum, Berg charges that the DNC failed to verify Obama’s eligibility to run for president.
In order to be eligible, presidential candidates are required to be “natural born” citizens and may not hold dual or multiple citizenship from foreign countries, according the suit’s legal memorandum.
According to Obama’s birth certificate, which his campaign posted on its Internet site in June to quell rumors, the senator was born in Hawaii on Aug. 6, 1961.
The lawsuit, however, questions the Democratic candidate’s claim that he was born in a Honolulu hospital.
The candidate’s late father, Barack Obama Sr., was a native of Kenya, and Berg claims the 47-year-old presumptive presidential candidate’s Kenyan relatives say he was born in the African country.
Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Kansas, and his parents met at the University of Hawaii when Dunham was a student there, according to the Obama campaign.
Eventually, Obama’s father returned to Kenya, and his son grew up in Hawaii with his mother and for a few years in Indonesia after Dunham married an Indonesian man, Lolo Soetoro. As well, Obama lived with his maternal grandparents in Hawaii.
Dunham reportedly traveled to Kenya during her pregnancy, and she was prevented from boarding an airline flight from Kenya to Hawaii because of the late stage of her pregnancy, the lawsuit alleges. She reportedly gave birth to Obama in Kenya, then flew home to Hawaii and registered his birth there.
Under U.S. law at the time of the Illinois lawmaker’s birth, if he had been born abroad, and one parent was a U.S. citizen, his mother would have had to live 10 years in the U.S., five of which after she reached 14 (years of age), according to court papers.
However, Dunham was only 18 years old when she gave birth to her son, not 19, Berg says, and Obama therefore would not have met U.S. citizenship requirements.
Berg concludes that the Democratic candidate is a Kenyan citizen. And because he never renounced his Kenyan citizenship, he is ineligible to run for president.

“Six days later (after the suit was filed), there’s not been one word from the Obama campaign, which tells me I’m on the right track,” he said.

http://www.timesherald.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20095084&BRD=1672&PAG=461&dept_id=33380&rfi=6

See story here

Darryl Delpeache says :

idea of self-policing and believing you’ll actually be able to protect yourself or your family with a gun is ignorant. It is also ignorant to believe we live in a society of gun-toting criminals who are looking to harm us at any opportunity.

Now, wouldn’t it be better to provide some solutions rather than being part of the problem?

Better storage: active handguns need to be stored at a facility similar to a shooting range where there is extra security and cameras to minimize the risk of a gun being stolen.

Instill mandatory incarceration times to those individuals illegally possessing firearms and for individuals toting a gun for any type of crime or the illegal transportation of such a device. This incarceration time would be in addition to any crime that was committed whether minor or major and therefore act as a deterrent to people from carrying a firearm in the first place.

Step up border management with large signage at border crossings advising people they will be incarcerated if such a gun is imported without proper papers and improper transportation of a firearm.

Fortunately the Constitution protects us from such gun nuts and the nutso city slicker ideals. Can you imagine saying a gun can not be used to protect yourself . This guy or gal clearly knows nothing about guns and should not be commenting on them. He should stay in if crime ridden city and stop trying to push his flawed ideals on us. The Constitution forbids him from regulating our guns.

Jacob Sullum | February 26, 2008, 8:07pm

While researching my column for this week (about Barack Obama’s position on gun control), I came across this lame response from Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, to the recent shootings at Northern Illinois University (NIU):

Do we give up and say we can’t do anything about these tragedies? Or do we take common-sense steps today to make it harder for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons?…

Over the years, the Brady Campaign has proposed numerous common-sense measures to reduce and prevent gun violence. It may be difficult to stop “suicide shooters” like the Northern Illinois University killer, but there are steps we can take as a nation.

We can require background checks for every gun transaction in America. Current Federal law requires that only Federally licensed gun dealers do a computer check on the criminal backgrounds of purchasers who buy guns from them. Yet there is no such restriction on unlicensed sellers who sell guns at gun shows, from the trunk of their cars or at their kitchen tables. If we want to make it harder to dangerous people to get dangerous weapons, we must close this loophole, and require that all gun buyers undergo a background check.

We can limit bulk purchases of handguns to cut down on the illegal gun trade. Gun buyers currently have no Federal limits on the number of guns they can buy at one time. Gun traffickers take advantage of the unlimited number of guns they can purchase at a time in order to sell guns to criminals and gangs….

We can also ban the sale of military-style assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines. One thing the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shooters had in common was that they both used high capacity ammunition magazines that would have been prohibited under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004

The NIU murderer, Steven Kazmierczak, legally purchased the shotgun and three handguns he used, which did not qualify as “assault weapons,” from a licensed dealer on three trips over seven months, and there does not seem to have been anything about his background that disqualified him from owning firearms. So the only possibly relevant suggestion offered by Helmke is to reimpose a 10-round federal limit on the size of magazines. But considering that Kazmierczak fired the shotgun six times and the handguns 48 times; that it takes just a few seconds to switch magazines; and that police arrived about six minutes after the attack started, by which time Kazmierczak already had killed himself, it is doubtful that the death toll was any higher than it would have been had he been carrying 10-round magazines. In fact, I cannot recall reading an account of a mass murder in the U.S. where “high capacity” magazines made a demonstrable difference.

The rest of Helmke’s “common-sense steps” could not possibly have stopped this attack. So why trot them out and pretend otherwise? Because that’s what gun controllers routinely do, as I noted in a 1994 article for reason. Their lobbying, publicity, and fundraising imperatives prevent them from admitting the truth: With something like 200 million guns in circulation and no reliable way of predicting which quiet graduate student will go on a rampage one day, this sort of thing is bound to happen occasionally. No policy short of wholesale firearm confiscation can prevent such incidents, although (as I’ve argued) allowing law-abiding people to carry concealed weapons in heretofore “gun-free zones” might help reduce the number of injuries and deaths after an attack starts.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), at a news conference yesterday in Manhattan, said he and congressional colleagues plan to step up efforts to close loopholes in gun-control measures and create a federal task force to come up with national school safety guidelines. They also plan to push for congressional hearings on links between mental illness and school violence

Among the efforts Schumer outlined are a bill introduced by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) last February, which is stalled in Congress, to provide funding for security at colleges and high schools.

“We have to make sure every college campus has a plan to deal with the violence,” he said.

Schumer noted the threat last week at MacArthur High School in Levittown, where school officials found a note in a boy’s bathroom that read: “I Will Kill Every 1″ with the date “2/15/08.” Yesterday, Nassau police said they were continuing to investigate the threat.

This week, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and Congressman Xavier Becerra (D-CA) introduced “microstamping” legislation titled the “National Crime Gun Identification Act of 2007.” The bill is co-sponsored in the Senate by Senators Feinstein (D-CA), Menendez (D-NJ), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Durbin (D-IL), Schumer (D-NY), and Reed (D-RI).

Commenting on the bill’s introduction, Kennedy said, “Micro-stamping ammunition is an important and effective method of tracing guns, and provides law enforcement with a much-needed resource in solving crimes.”

Actually, microstamping has never been implemented. Legislation was passed in California at the end of last year, but has not been implemented. Therefore, claiming it is an “effective method” is not correct. On the contrary, there are numerous and varied problems with micro-stamping (for additional information on those flaws, please click here:

The theory of “micro-stamping” is that a firearm’s firing pin or other internal parts could bear microscopic codes unique to the firearm, that could imprint the codes on fired cartridge cases, and that the codes could be entered into a computerized database before the firearm leaves the factory. Then, the theory continues, if such a gun were used in a crime, police investigators could pick up a cartridge case left at the crime scene, identify the markings on the case, run the markings against the database, and thereby identify the criminal involved.

Micro-stamping has repeatedly failed in tests.
the “vast majority” of micro-stamped characters in the alphanumeric serial number couldn’t be read on “any of the expended cartridge cases generated and examined.”

Micro-stampings are easily removed.

Micro-stamping may increase gun thefts, home invasions and other burglaries, and expand the black market in guns. Criminals will be further encouraged to get guns illegally, if they believe that guns bought legally will be linked to them in a computerized database.

Most guns do not automatically eject fired cartridge cases.

Problems for law enforcement. Micro-stamping exposes police departments to lawsuits if officers fire “unsafe handguns” at suspects. Departments will have to spend money destroying all cases fired in training, to prevent cases from being reused at crime scenes. Criminals can obtain fired cases from practice ranges, and use them to “seed” crime scenes, to confuse investigators.

An FBI agent revealed the true motivation behind the placing of two nooses in the tree the day after the assembly. According to the expulsion committee, the crudely constructed nooses were not aimed at black students. Instead, they were understood to be a prank by three white students aimed at their fellow white friends, members of the school rodeo team. (The students apparently got the idea from watching episodes of “Lonesome Dove.”)

So much for the protesting the nooses had nothing to do with black people.

Read full story here

The African-American Studies Program at Missouri State University will host a panel discussion on the Jena Six case on Tuesday, February 12, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., in the Plaster Student Union Ballroom. The event is free and open to the public.

The African-American Studies Program invites the entire community to join us in this discussion.

You can bet they will not have anyone from the other side to tell the truth and you can bet they wont read the true history of events from the Jena website.

Will they tell that the black students did not even know the history of the noose as its now told until weaks later? And that the black students joked and carried on sticking heads into the noose before they were cut down.

Will they discuss if its really constitutional for the feds to regulate nooses when the constitution does not allow for that?

Story Here

A gun-control exchange from Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate:

MODERATOR TIM RUSSERT: Sen. Clinton, when you ran for the Senate in 2000, you said that everyone who wishes to purchase a gun should have a license, and that every handgun sale or transfer should be registered in a national registry. Will you try to implement such a plan?

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, I am against illegal guns, and illegal guns are the cause of so much death and injury in our country. I also am a political realist and I understand that the political winds are very powerful against doing enough to try to get guns off the street, get them out of the hands of young people.

The law in New York was as you state, and the law in New York has worked to a great extent. I don’t want the federal government pre-empting states and cities like New York that have very specific problems.

So here’s what I would do. We need to have a registry that really works with good information about people who are felons, people who have been committed to mental institutions like the man in Virginia Tech who caused so much death and havoc. We need to make sure that that information is in a timely manner, both collected and presented.

We do need to crack down on illegal gun dealers. This is something that I would like to see more of. And we need to enforce the laws that we have on the books. I would also work to reinstate the assault-weapons ban. We now have, once again, police deaths going up around the country, and in large measure because bad guys now have assault weapons again. We stopped it for awhile. Now they’re back on the streets.

So there are steps we need to take that we should do together. You know, I believe in the Second Amendment. People have a right to bear arms. But I also believe that we can common-sensically approach this.

RUSSERT: But you’ve backed off a national licensing registration plan?

CLINTON: Yes.

My comments:

I am against illegal guns, and illegal guns are the cause of so much death and injury in our country

There is no such thing as a illegal gun even a machine gun is legal to own if you have a FFL so Hilliary needs to explain what she thinks a illegal gun is?
Its likely that she is talking about guns that she can not trace back to a gun store. But such guns are still 100% legal.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution as written by our nation’s Founding Fathers states that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” James Madison, the author, praised “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”

A look at the history of gun control confirms their insight. In 1911, Turkey established gun control; 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated. In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control; more than 20 million dissidents were exterminated. In 1935, China established gun control and 20 million political dissidents were exterminated. In 1938, Germany established gun control;

13 million Jews and others were exterminated. In 1956, Cambodia established gun control; one million people exterminated. In 1964, Guatemala established gun control; 100,000 Mayan Indians were exterminated. In 1970, Uganda established gun control; 300,000 Christians were exterminated.

Violent crime has increased in Australia, Canada and Great Britain following adoption of legislation restricting firearms. Contrast this with the fact that gun ownership U.S. citizens is at an all-time high, and “right-to-carry” laws have been implemented in 40 states. And violent crimes have fallen dramatically. The most flagrant exception to this trend is in Washington (murder capital of the U.S.) and New York City, where you have the most restrictive “gun control” laws in the country.

Yes, our Founding Fathers knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote the Second Amendment.

Orginal comment here

Officials in the NFL and the NBA increasingly take a paternalistic attitude toward their athletes. For years, the NFL and the NBA have attempted to distance players from firearms. Some would argue these policies are aimed at a culture that celebrates the criminal use of violent weapons, but the effect is pretty clear: The leagues would rather their players put themselves at risk than protect themselves with guns.

The NFL asks not just that players avoid guns in general, but that they avoid having them even at home. Paul Tagliabue instituted an official league gun policy back in 1994 that discouraged even legally obtained weapons. “Any weapon, particularly a firearm, is dangerous,” the policy states, “especially so when it is in a vehicle or within reach of children and others not properly trained in its use.”

Full story here.

The government is using paperwork errors as small as the abbreviation of a city name to shut down some of the nation’s longest-serving gun shops, and 2nd Amendment advocates fear the right to bear arms will mean little if there’s no way to obtain a gun.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Larry Pratt, of Gun Owners of America, told WND while confirming that as recently as 15 or 20 years ago, there were 250,000 licensed gun dealers in the United States.

Today, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told WND, there are 108,381, and if more cases involving dealers such as Red’s Trading Post of Twin Falls, Idaho, develop, that number will plummet quickly.

Ryan Horsley, a spokesman for Red’s, which has been in business 71 years, said the store has been battling over its license because of rules infractions such as a missing poster for more than six years.

Red’s manager Ryan Horsley

He’s launched an online petition asking Congress to intervene and halt the “blatant targeting of law abiding dealers.” It also seeks a “fair, constitutional and speedy appeals process” and has attracted thousands of signatures.

Full story here

Summary
The Supreme Court has heard only five cases directly related to the Second Amendment. They are: U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), Presser v. Illinois (1886), Miller v. Texas (1894), U.S. v. Miller (1939), and Lewis v. U.S. (1980). One the Supreme Court refused to hear, Burton v. Sills (1968), and one concerning the meaning of the Fourth Amendment and “the people,” U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990), are also discussed. (Links to the Supreme Court decisions are provided at the end of each section.)

U.S. v. Cruikshank involved members of the Ku Klux Klan depriving black victims of their basic rights such as freedom of assembly and to bear arms. The court decided that neither the First nor Second Amendments applied to the states, but were limitations on Congress. Thus the federal government had no power to correct these violations, rather the citizens had to rely on the police power of the states for their protection from private individuals.

This case is often misunderstood or quoted out of context by claiming Cruikshank held the Second Amendment does not grant a right to keep and bear arms. However, the court also said this about the First Amendment. The court explained that these rights weren’t granted or created by the Constitution, they existed prior to the Constitution.

Presser v. Illinois ruled that the states had the right to strictly regulate private military groups and associations. It also reaffirmed the Cruikshank decision that the Second Amendment acts as a limitation upon the federal government and not the states. However Presser also stated that setting the Second Amendment aside, the states could not prohibit the “people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security…”

Of the Second Amendment cases, U.S. v. Miller is the most mis-cited (intentionally and otherwise) by the lower courts, not to mention the news media, textbooks and encyclopedias. Some courts have acknowledged the true holdings of Miller, but then simply disregarded them. Though referenced again below, please don’t forget to read how some courts deliberately mis-cite Miller.

Full story here

And Here

In what can only be a carefully-timed, deliberate insult to the United States and its Constitution, the United Nations is hosting a conference on global gun control aimed directly at our Second Amendment, on dates that include our national holiday, July 4.

The U.N. Conference on Global Gun Control, scheduled June 24-July 7, poses a direct threat to our constitutionally-protected individual right to keep and bear arms, said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). Gottlieb will attend the conference, but he suggests that this may be an opportune time for Congress and the White House to reconsider this nation’s level of financial support for an international organization that now wants to write a treaty that specifically attacks a cornerstone of our federal constitution, and the lynchpin to our liberty.

“Had it not been for our tradition of private firearms ownership,” Gottlieb stated, “our citizens might still be subjects of the queen. Had it not been for America, all of Europe might be speaking German. Were America not the ‘great arsenal of democracy’ that President Franklin D. Roosevelt described in 1940, the world would be a far different place, and the sanctimonious bureaucrats at the U.N. might instead be working in labor camps.

“Not once, but twice in the past century, American citizens have risen to the challenge and quite literally saved the world,” Gottlieb recalled. “From our heartland have come heroes like Alvin York, Audie Murphy, Joe Foss and others who grew up in a land of freedom and knew what it took to defend that birthright.

“Yet, as we celebrate our 230th anniversary, global anti-gunners, under the guise of reviewing a U.N. program of action on small arms and light weapons, want to create a binding international agreement that could supersede our laws and constitution,” Gottlieb said. “We have done much for the U.N. and in return, the organization has hosted despots, tyrants and dictators whose record of human rights abuses, aggression and genocide speaks for itself. And now comes an attack on our constitution, on our national holiday.

“America has always answered the call to help our international friends and neighbors,” Gottlieb observed, “but when our very way of life is attacked, maybe it is time to find more worthy endeavors for our material and financial support.”

The House yesterday passed Republican-backed legislation overhauling the Endangered Species Act that includes a provision requiring the government to compensate landowners whose property is confiscated to protect animals.
“When the law is not working, we have to respond to that, step in, reauthorize the bill, put the emphasis on recovery, protect private property owners,” said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo, California Republican. “If you take away someone’s private property — if you take away the use of it — you have to pay them for it.”
The vote was 229-193, with 36 Democrats and 193 Republicans in favor, and 158 Democrats, 34 Republicans and one independent opposed.
The Bush administration — in a statement by the Office of Management and Budget — voiced support for the bill, praising “the importance of protecting private property rights.”
But it also said that new requirements related to the creation of recovery plans for endangered species, new statutory deadlines and the new conservation aid program “could result in a significant budgetary impact” and that some language in the bill could generate new litigation.
The Senate has not acted on the measure.
Supporters of the bill said the 1973 act actually has hurt the environment because the presence of an endangered species on private property brings about heavy and even prohibitive restrictions on land use, thus discouraging landowners from reporting a species’ existence.
Rep. Denny Rehberg, Montana Republican, said the law has scared Western landowners so much that they’d rather hide endangered species than report them. He lifted a shovel over his head yesterday and said it is “time to end the joke of shoot, shovel and shut up.”
Rep. Joe Baca, California Democrat, said a hospital in his district had to pay $3 million to move their building several hundred feet to protect an endangered fly.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said.
But many Democrats said the bill would gut a valuable law that has saved many species and create a giveaway to big developers.
“It’s an entitlement program for landowners that want to gut the Endangered Species Act,” said Rep. Tom Udall, New Mexico Democrat.

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